Circles in the Dust (25 page)

             
“It’s…going,” he said, unsure himself of how much progress he had made. “Like I said, Mitch remembered me, so that’s something. It definitely made it easier than starting from the bottom.”

             
“Do you think that’s really his plan, David? Relying on the impatience of the Outliers, who have been sitting outside our walls for almost two years?”

             
“It kind of seems like it could work, doesn’t it?”

             
“It’s cruel.” All the humor she had shown earlier was gone. “You need to do something, David. Work faster. The snows are coming.”

             
“I know,” he snapped. He had been out here for two days. How much could he have possibly done in that time? “I’m working on it. I don’t know if our plan would even work though, Elizabeth. How many people can the Base afford to let in, anyway?”

             
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can try and find out.”

             
They sat there for a moment, both deep in their own thoughts.

             
“You don’t think he’s lying, do you?”

             
David had to think about that. “About what? People dying?”

             
“Just everything. You don’t think he would just be throwing you off on a wild goose chase, do you?”

             
“Mitch, or the Mayor?” David mumbled. She cast a venomous look back in response. It was no joke, but he knew he couldn’t say that. “I think he trusts me,” David responded. “We were… we worked together. We survived together. We were like brothers, once.”

             
“So it’s just like old times?”

             
David knew this was a trap of a question. Of course things were not the same. David was not the one keeping Mitch from being killed at any moment. It was Mitch who was really in charge this time. At least there was one consolation: the stakes were ever the same.

             
“We’re on the same side, Elizabeth. If he’s changed, it’s for the better. The Mitch I knew would have climbed over the fence at the first chance, rather than wait for the rest. He’s a good guy.”

             
“I hope so, David. It’s not just you and him. We’ve all got a stake in this game.”

             
“I know.”

             
“I’m…” she started to say something then turned her face away.

             
“What?” he pressed her.

             
“I’m just… glad I found you. That’s all.”

             
“It was lucky I was sitting here.”

             
“Yes, it was lucky you were here tonight,” she echoed, biting her lip.

             
“Elizabeth, I need to know what is going on in the Base. Can you find out how many people have died because of the Outliers in the last few months, since the weekly attacks started? There has got to be some record of it, right?”

             
“I can try,” she said uncertainly. “I’ll have to ask around…”

             
“Talk to whoever you have to. Find out how many have died, how many the Base can take on. And find out who died, if you can. At least the last person. I might have less time than I thought.”

             
“Um, David…?”

             
“Yeah?”

              Elizabeth’s eyes glistened, though David couldn’t be sure if it was from tears or the light of the moon as she looked up at his. He felt his frantic mind freeze at the sight.

             
“Be careful, okay?”

             
David’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to believe those were tears, tears she would cry for him. Maybe she really was worried about him, concerned for his life and his safety. Maybe she missed him, and worried their time together might end with him out here.

             
Maybe she was just worried about the people that were relying on him back home.

             
“I will.”

ch
apter 33

A stray beam of late afternoon light pierced the shutters to besiege happily closed eyelids, rudely waking David. He rose from the bed to find that Mitch was gone, blankets piled neatly on the boughs that were beginning to sag and harden. Curious, David thought. Mitch had slipped in after David the night before. David had nearly been asleep when his cabin-mate had slithered through the door and snaked his way underneath his own covers. David said nothing, but wondered to himself what it was that had distracted Mitch the night before, what had taken him so long to do. The sky had begun to lighten before David returned to the cabin, dawn just around the corner, and he had expected Mitch to sleep as late as he.

              But he was alone in the cabin.

             
David rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he stumbled drowsily out into the light of the fading sun. The camp was empty. The Outliers were always out foraging, gathering and gathering all day long. Only a few ever remained in the camp during the daytime, and David was one of those, left behind for the day while the able-bodied men went to work, with the crippled and elderly to keep him company.

             
He made his way out into the trees to relieve his bladder, taking his time about it, not really knowing what he should do until Mitch returned. Like the Base, the Outliers had chosen to introduce him to everyone all at once, and thus he knew no one. Except for Mitch and Mort, he had shared no more than a handful of words with any of the others.

             
On his way back into camp, the pressure of water gone, he pondered what Elizabeth had told him the night before. Someone had died in the Base, killed by one of the Outliers Mitch had been unable to convince to stay at camp and refrain from running to their death. That plan was macabre and inhumane, but how many parts of the life of a survivor were pleasant?

             
Maybe it would be better for everyone if some of the more radical survivors were taken out of the picture. Maybe it would prevent future hostilities and violence, allow for stronger bonds to be forged between the two peoples, bonds that could easily be shattered from within by those who lacked patience and forethought, who would rather raid the ones their lives depended on than wait for a stable solution. David was here now, right? He would work something out. David’s life, and surely plenty of others inside and outside the palisade walls, depended on it. Without the problem children, the family would be closer. Let the rebellious teenager go off on his own and get himself killed. Who needs him?

             
Everyone needs him, David thought. The number of survivors had dipped too low already. If anyone was going to have a future, everyone had to participate. Each death lowered the chance of the group surviving. Every grave brought them six feet closer to extinction.

             
David could see his breath as he came back into the deserted habitat of the Outliers. The cabins were dark and foreboding, like empty skulls scattered in a desecrated graveyard. He walked toward the fire, the nerve center of the camp, hoping to find someone to talk to. He hoped to build a rapport with some of the individual Outliers, and maybe doing that without Mitch present would be a good idea. He needed them to know him, if he ended up needing them to listen to him. He could use Mitch as a mouthpiece, but only so long as they saw eye to eye.

             
Besides, maybe he could make himself useful.

             
As he walked, David became aware of a boy, a young boy, sitting alone in front of one of the cabins. The boy had a knife in one hand and a bloody carcass in the other. His hair was wild, long and dark, obscuring his face from view. His clothes were barely rags, hanging from his starved frame like denim cobwebs. He sat alone on a stump as David approached.

             
“Hey there,” he said as he neared the boy, who made no sign that he heard the greeting. “Is that a squirrel? I wouldn’t have thought you’d be able to find one of those around here.” David watched as the knife was abandoned and replaced by grimy hands, dirty fingernails slipping under skin and separating it from flesh. It looked brutal, but David noticed there was not a single tear in the pelt. It looked like he was peeling a bloody sock from a grotesque creature that had crawled into it and died.

             
As David watched the skinning, now silent, he noticed that the boy’s shirt was actually made from the pelts of squirrels and rabbits. It was a hairy mess of a garment, but sewn with care. The boy continued his work, bare feet planted in the dirt, oblivious to the presence of the world around him. David turned to walk away just as the boy was pulling the last few inches of the sock off the carcass.

             
“Yes.”

             
The voice was raspy and deep, like the sound of two stones grinding together, no doubt a result of a life lived around endless fires, like the small one separating them.

             
“I would have guessed you had found all of the ones left out here a long time ago.” David was standing at a distance, eying the peculiar boy warily.

             
“Everyone gave up. Say foraging smarter. I don’t know.”

             
“But you still keep at it?” David asked. There was a pause as the boy searched for a stick around his feet.

             
“Yes.”

             
“Looks like you’re the smart one, if you’re still finding them. I’m surprised you’ve found that many.”

             
The boy found a stick that pleased him and set the carcass on top of its fur, and returning the worn blade to his hand, began carving a tip onto the miniature spit.

             
“Not a lot,” he replied, and David caught a glimpse of gnarled, yellowed teeth. He ran his tongue over his own, wondering what they looked like.

             
“You’re a hunter, rather than a gatherer?” David queried.

             
The skin of his forehead crinkled as he considered this. David wondered if it was the idea or the words that vexed him.

“Yes.” The boy had not taken his eyes off his work since David had first caught sight of him. “Mine,” he said abruptly, finally deigning to take a look at his visitor. His face was filthy and his eyes bloodshot and sunken, his skin had a slight yellowish tint. David just stopped himself from cringing at the savage power of his gaze. His hands were still and David got a good look at them. The bones were twisted and deformed, which David had not noticed while they were at work. Now as the boy returned his attention to the stick in his hands, eying it from different angles, David could see the odd way the boy moved, swinging his head around instead of simply turning it, using his wrist to manipulate the knife, rather than troubling his bulbous finger joints.

              “That’s okay,” David said when he found his voice once more. “Do you know who I am?”

             
“Mitch friend,” the boy replied in his husky voice. “Mitch think you good, you good.”

             
“Mitch is a good guy.” David meant it as a statement, but it came out as a question.

             
“Mitch let me in. He say I live here. We get into Base together.” His words were punctuated by a deep cough. “The others no like me, but Mitch good. He tells me stay.”

             
The boy ran the stick through the meager body of the squirrel without betraying an ounce of strain and placed it over his small cook fire. David looked up at the boy’s cabin and realized that it was set a way back from the circle made up around the central fire by the rest.

             
“He is a good man,” David repeated, this time with more conviction. 

             
The boy grunted his assent.

             
“You live alone?” David asked.

             
“Yes,” was the curt reply as the boy rose and walked over to a tree to hang his pelt. He sunk rusty nails into each corner using the shaft of his knife.

             
“Do you have any family?” David asked. The boy was so young; he couldn’t have been more than ten years old at most. He had to have someone.

             
“Family?” he repeated.

             
“How old are you?” David blurted out. He knew it was a stupid question as soon as he asked it. Who really knew how old they were? So many winters had blended together it was hard to tell. He hadn’t even been able to answer when Elizabeth had asked him the same.

             
“I had mother,” the boy said, sounding confused. “She die.”

             
“Oh,” David said. It was a stupid question anyway, he thought.

             
This boy was so young, most likely a little older than David had been when he watched his family die one by one, and he was on his own. David suddenly saw himself in the youth; but he had grown up with a family, he knew something of the world besides the wild. The world had abused this boy, deformed him, abandoned him, more than anyone else. David wanted to be sad, but found more fear inside than tears.

             
“You have no one,” David whispered.

             
“I need no one,” the boy responded. His garish legs carried him through the door of his cabin. He emerged with a handful of herbs, which he set about crushing in his warped hands and spreading over the body roasting in the fire, turning it as he did.

             
“But at least you have a home here,” David stated.

             
“Home?” the lad questioned.

             
David’s head reeled as he found himself explaining another fundamental aspect of human life to this stranger.

             
“This is home, I guess,” the boy ended up agreeing. “But Base is better home.”

             
“I certainly hope so,” David answered. He turned to leave as the boy walked back toward his cabin again. Whirling, he posed one final question to the dark survivor who had been born in the new world. “What’s your name?”

             
The boy turned his head and answered over his shoulder. “No name.”

             
The boy vanished into the abyss of his cabin.

              David spent the rest of the sunlit hours by the main fire, helping an old man crush roots and tubers into powder to be used for making some poor excuse for bread. His hands were by the fire but his thoughts remained at the cabin set apart from the others. He could not stop thinking about the boy with no name, no family, no idea what life was all about. The boy who had been born into this world, this world after, with no idea about what life was like when survival was not the foremost thought in every mind, with no one to even tell him about it. This boy who had been crippled by the interminable winter, his words, his actions primitive, ancient. Human life void of humanity.

             
“Is that what we have become?” David asked himself. Could we regress that far? Would we ever make it back?